Japan on Tuesday executed a person convicted of killing seven folks in a truck ramming and stabbing rampage in Tokyo's standard Akihabara electronics district in 2008, the justice ministry mentioned.
Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa instructed reporters that Tomohiro Kato was hanged on the Tokyo detention middle earlier Tuesday.
Furukawa mentioned Tomohiro Kato had undertaken "meticulous preparation" for the assault and displayed a "robust intent to kill."
"The dying sentence on this case was finalized by ample deliberation in court docket," he instructed reporters. "Based mostly on this reality, I authorized the execution after extraordinarily thorough scrutiny."
Kato went on the stabbing spree on June 8, 2008, telling police: "I got here to Akihabara to kill folks. It did not matter who I might kill."
He was arrested on the spot shortly after the assaults, by which he rammed a rented two-ton truck right into a crowd of pedestrians earlier than getting out and randomly stabbing folks.
"This can be a very painful case that led to extraordinarily grave penalties and shocked society," Furukawa mentioned Tuesday.
Surveillance footage aired by nationwide broadcaster NHK after the assault confirmed Kato shopping for looking knives two days earlier than the assault, laughing with a retailer employee and at instances making stabbing motions along with his fingers.
Police mentioned Kato documented his lethal journey to Akihabara on Web bulletin boards, typing messages on a cell phone from behind the wheel of the truck and complaining of his unstable job and his loneliness.
In a single on-line message about 20 minutes earlier than the assault, police mentioned Kato wrote: "It is time."
The son of a banker, Kato grew up in Aomori prefecture in Japan's north, the place he graduated from a prime highschool.
Prosecutors mentioned Kato's self-confidence had plummeted after a girl he had chatted with on-line abruptly stopped emailing him after he despatched her a photograph of himself.
His anger in opposition to most people grew when his feedback on an Web bulletin board, together with his plans to go on a killing spree, have been met with no response in any respect, prosecutors mentioned.
Whereas awaiting trial, Kato wrote to a 56-year-old taxi driver whom he injured within the stabbing spree, expressing his regret.
The victims "have been having fun with their lives, they usually had goals, vivid futures, heat households, lovers, buddies and colleagues," Kato wrote in line with a duplicate printed within the Shukan Asahi weekly.
And in court docket, he supplied regret for the assault.
"Please let me use this event to apologize," he mentioned concerning the bloody rampage that additionally left 10 folks injured.
After the 2008 rampage, Japan banned possession of double-edged knives with blades longer than 5.5 centimeters, punishable by as much as three years in jail or a 500,000 yen fantastic.
The assault was Japan's worst mass killing in seven years and Kato was sentenced to dying in 2011, a choice that was upheld by Japan's prime court docket in 2015.
Kato's execution is the primary in Japan this 12 months and comes after three prisoners have been hanged in December 2021. These executions ended a two-year hiatus and have been the primary underneath Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's administration.
Japan is without doubt one of the few developed international locations to retain the dying penalty, and public help for capital punishment stays excessive regardless of worldwide criticism.
Executions are carried out by hanging, usually lengthy after sentencing. Greater than 100 persons are at present on dying row in Japan.
Worldwide advocacy teams have denounced the Japanese system, underneath which dying row inmates can wait for his or her executions for a few years in solitary confinement and are solely instructed of their impending dying a number of hours forward of time.
However Furukawa defended the dying penalty on Tuesday.
The federal government believes it's "not acceptable" to abolish capital punishment, given "heinous crimes equivalent to mass killings and robbery-murders nonetheless repeatedly happen", he instructed reporters.
Tuesday's execution comes on the anniversary of one other main stabbing assault -- the 2016 Sagamihara rampage at a disabled care facility, by which 19 folks have been killed.
Japan additionally carried out the executions of six members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult accountable for the 1995 sarin assault and different crimes on July 26, 2018.
The Related Press contributed to this report.